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Historical Background Commemorative Visit to Japan 2 – 10 August 2008 Contents 1. Japan and the Second World War 1.1 Background 1.2 The Road To War: Manchuria And The ‘China Incident’ 1931-1941 1.3 Pearl Harbor And The Beginning Of The ‘Greater East Asia War’, 1941-1942 1.4 The Japanese Home Front 2. Japan 1945 To Date 3. A Note on the Shinto Religion 4. Japan and the Collective Memory of the Second World War 5. Japanese School Textbook Debate 6. Historic Sites We Will Be Visiting 6.1 Kyoto 6.1.1Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion) 6.1.2 Ryoanji 6.1.3 Nijo Castle 6.1.4 Kiyomizu Temple 6.1.5 Heian Shrine 6.1.6 Kyoto Museum For World Peace 6.2 Hiroshima 6.2.1 Miyajima Island and Itsukushima Shrine 6.2.2 A Note on the Bombing of Hiroshima 6.2.3 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum 6.3 Tokyo 6.3.1 Edo Museum 6.3.2 Yasukuni Shrine And Yushukan Museum 6.3.3 Hitachi Aircraft Factory Electricity Substation 6.4 Yokohama 6.4.1 Yokahama Commonwealth War Cemetery 1 1. JAPAN AND THE SECOND WORLD WAR 1.1 Background By the time Japan entered the Second World War in December 1941, with its surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, it had become one of the world’s most industrialised nations. At the beginning of the twentieth century, after centuries of self-imposed isolation from the rest of the world, Japan had made great strides in catching up with the great powers. In 1902, it concluded an alliance with Britain, and during the First World War British and Japanese troops fought alongside each other against the German colony of Tsingtao in China. After the war, Japan was beset by economic and political crises. The worsening economic situation reached breaking point after the Wall Street Crash of October 1929, and the ‘Great Depression’ which followed. The military seized control of the government in Japan and set about suppressing democratic movements and institutions. Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, and politicians opposed to the military regime were assassinated by fanatical young army officers. But, even within the armed forces there were violent divisions, with senior army and navy officers constantly jockeying with each other for political supremacy. 1.2 The Road To War: Manchuria And The ‘China Incident’ 1931-1941 In 1931, using a fake sabotage attempt as a pretext, Japan invaded the Chinese province of Manchuria. There, the following year, it established the puppet state of Manchukuo. In theory it was the Emperor, worshipped as a god by his people, who held absolute power in Japan. In practice, however, Emperor Hirohito, who had been on the throne since 1926, was just a pawn of the admirals and generals. The military held the real power in Japan and were becoming increasingly uncontrollable. Anybody who spoke out against them risked physical violence or death. In 1932 both the prime minister and the finance minister were assassinated by the military. Condemned by the western powers for its invasion of Manchuria, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933, and in 1936 it signed a pact with Nazi Germany. In July 1937, following clashes with Chinese troops near Peking, Japan launched a full-scale invasion of China. The Sino–Japanese War or the ‘China Incident’, as it was (and often still is) called in Japan, was to last for another eight years. The conflict was bitter and brutal. The Japanese viewed the Chinese as less than human and followed a ‘three-all’ policy -‘Burn All, Seize All, Kill All’ -murdering and raping indiscriminately. Becoming a prisoner was seen by Japanese troops as the ultimate act of cowardice and degradation, and Chinese soldiers who surrendered could expect little mercy from them. During the ‘Rape of Nanking’, which followed the city’s fall in December 1937, an estimated 300,000 Chinese soldiers and civilians were subjected to appalling brutalities and then massacred. Over 80,000 Chinese women were raped in the city before they were slaughtered. 2 Estimates of the Chinese death toll for the eight years of war vary hugely, and often include victims of the fighting between Mao’s Communist and Chiang Kai Shek’s nationalist forces. A conservative estimate puts the number of Chinese who died as a result of war at 20,000,000, including those who died as a result of Japanese chemical warfare attacks and experiments. The ‘China Incident’ was also costly for the Japanese and the relative lack of success there became a source of public discontent. Between 1937 and 1945, 400,000 Japanese troops died in China, the majority in the first four years of the conflict. In the late 1930s, Japan became increasingly industrialised. Many firms which are now household names, such as Fuji, Toyota and Mitsubishi, were established. But the demands of the war in China were such that Japan had to look for raw material to sustain its war effort, oil in particular. In the Far East, most of these resources were controlled or guarded by Britain and the United States, and to a lesser extent France and the Netherlands. In 1940, Japan signed a pact with Germany and Italy, then fighting Britain and its allies. With the success of German forces against Britain and in Europe in 1940 and 1941, Japan saw its chance to seize the European-governed assets, moving into French Indochina and threatening British and Dutch colonies in the Far East. The United States (Still not officially entered into the war) blocked shipments of raw materials to Japan and, in September 1941, insisted that Japan give up its New Order in Asia. This meant withdrawing troops from China and Indochina. The American demand effectively ended the possibility of any diplomatic solution to Japan’s plans to dominate Asia. The Japanese military decided that the only way forward was to attack the United States and then to capture American, British and Dutch possessions in the Far East, including the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia). 1.3 Pearl Harbor And The Beginning Of The ‘Greater East Asia War’, 1941-1942 On 7 December 1941, the ‘Greater East Asia War’ began. Japanese aircraft, launched from aircraft carriers, made a surprise attack on the base of the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. By knocking the Fleet out, they hoped to ensure a short war. At the same time, Japanese troops invaded Malaya and Thailand. In less than three months, Japan conquered Hong Kong, Malaya and Singapore, most of Burma, and threatened India. All were British possessions and considered by many to be strongholds and impenetrable to attack. They also conquered the Philippines, where US forces had been based, and the Dutch East Indies. Allied servicemen, who had been fed stories of the racial inferiority of the Japanese and their supposedly poor equipment, were shocked and demoralized to find that, although often numerically inferior, Japanese troops proved tough and determined fighters. The quality of their equipment also tended to be superior to that of the Allies. At first, the Japanese were looked upon as liberators by many of the peoples in the countries they overran. On account of their race, many Asians had often been disadvantaged under European or American rule. Now, fed on false Japanese promises, they looked forward to independence within the ‘Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere’, supposedly an economic and racial union of all Asians. Although puppet national governments were set up, real power remained with the Japanese, who imposed a harsh, racist regime throughout the countries they occupied. Many Asians now suffered terribly as much needed foodstuffs and raw materials were diverted to the Japanese war effort. 3 The Japanese military hoped that by destroying the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, the Americans would accept the inevitable, make peace and allow Japan to establish supremacy in Asia. But they seriously miscalculated the sense of outrage and thirst for vengeance that now existed in America. They miscalculated too the effects of the Pearl Harbor attack. Most US vessels sunk or damaged in the attack were quickly made battle worthy again. More importantly, the main American carrier force remained undamaged. Japan was now condemned to fighting a protracted war in the Pacific for which she was militarily and economically unprepared. Halted in her southward advance by the US Navy at the Battle of the Coral Sea, Japan was decisively beaten by the Americans during the Battle of Midway in June 1942. After Midway, Japan’s eventual defeat was inevitable, but three years of hard fighting lay ahead. Japan’s strategy had been to protect the THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY, 4 - 7 JUNE 1942 homeland by keeping the enemy as far from USS YORKTOWN is hit on her portside during the Japanese bombardment in the Battle of Midway in the Pacific on 4 June its shores as possible and to win a short war. 1942. NYF 42432 The Pacific War saw the Japanese being gradually pushed back over thousands of kilometres of ocean and land. The fighting was characterised by large-scale naval engagements, where the opposing fleets could rarely see each other, and bitter land battles as the Americans ‘hopped’ from island to island. More warships were lost in the Pacific between 1942 and 1945 than in all other twentieth century wars combined. The war between America and Japan had strong racist overtones. US servicemen in the South Pacific were told, ‘Kill Japs, kill Japs, kill more Japs’ and there was scant regard on both sides for the rules of war. Japanese resistance was fanatical. Adhering to the code of Bushido, Japanese soldiers would commit suicide rather than surrender. For example, out of a Japanese garrison of nearly 3,000, only 17 were taken alive when US Marines stormed Tarawa in November 1943. By August 1944, with the American capture of the Marianas islands, the Japanese high command recognized that the war was effectively lost. The loss of the Marianas led to a government crisis and the fall of the Prime Minister, General Hideki Tojo, the militarist who had led Japan into war. US bombers were now within striking range of the Japanese home islands, and Japan was soon subjected to a series of devastating air raids. In one THE CENTRAL PACIFIC FRONT 19431945 The Invasion of the Marianas Islands, June - August 1944: An American Marine uses a flame-thrower to clear a Japanese held pillbox on Saipan. NYF 30343 raid alone, on Tokyo in March 1945, over 70,000 people were killed. Against such attacks the Japanese had little in the way of defence. As the Americans now approached the home islands, Japanese resistance became even more desperate. In April 1945, US forces numbering over 1,200 ships landed 180,000 troops on Okinawa, just 500 kilometres from the Japanese mainland. There for the first time in strength, Kamikazes attacked American warships. These were aircraft packed with explosives and manned by 4 suicide pilots who would try crash the planes onto American ships. So great was the initial damage done by the Kamikazes that US commanders seriously considered abandoning operations on Okinawa altogether. By the time the fighting on Okinawa finally ended on 20 June 1945, over 100,000 Japanese soldiers and civilians, including 2,000 Kamikaze pilots, had been killed, while American losses in killed and wounded totaled nearly 50,000. The Americans, now looking at the invasion of Japan itself, were faced with the daunting prospect of equally fanatical resistance, huge casualty figures and the possibility of the war lasting for years. It was clear that conventional bombing raids did not hold the answer. Many German cities had been pounded into rubble without a German surrender. The atomic bomb, then under development, seemed to be the only way of ending the war quickly with the minimum loss of Allied lives. In July 1945, during the meeting of Allied leaders at Potsdam, a declaration was made calling on the Japanese to surrender unconditionally or face ‘prompt and utter destruction’. This was rejected by Tokyo, and President Truman sanctioned the use of the atomic bomb. Rocket Weapons and the Atomic Bomb: The scene of devastation at Hiroshima which resulted from the explosion of the Atomic Bomb on 6 August 1945. The destructive power of the device was equal to the bomb-load of nearly 2000 B-29s carrying conventional high explosives. SC 278262 On 6 August 1945, the first atomic bomb was dropped over Hiroshima, to be followed three days later by another on Nagasaki. On 15 August 1945, Japan finally surrendered, with Emperor Hirohito telling his people, ‘the war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage…’ Since the ‘China Incident’ began in July 1937 over 2,000,000 Japanese servicemen had been killed and nearly a million civilians. 1.4 The Japanese Home Front The news of the attack on Pearl Harbor and war with Britain and America came as a great shock to the ordinary people of Japan. But their initial apprehension gave way to jubilation as Japanese forces went from victory to victory. JAPANESE SURRENDER AT TOKYO BAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 1945 General Umezu Yoshijiro signs the surrender on behalf of the Imperial Japanese Army. A 30427A Military successes in the Far East and Pacific were cause for celebration, especially as Japanese forces had appeared to have got bogged down in China. Feature films and newsreels gloated over the humbling of the arrogant, morally inferior whites. But, the Japanese people were told, in order to secure and retain their newly-won possessions, they would have to make sacrifices and to be as dedicated as their soldiers. This they did until the surrender in 1945, and there was little or no meaningful opposition to the war on the Japan’s home front. Japan had been on a war footing since 1937, but with Pearl Harbor, measures that further militarized Japanese life were introduced. Air raid drills, at first unnecessary at a practical 5 level as no enemy bomber could reach Japan, were intensified to promote a martial spirit. These were compulsory and organized by the neighbourhood associations that governed everyday life in wartime Japan. Attempts were made to stamp out all Western influences. This even included clothing, with a unisex national uniform being introduced. Stringent rationing of food and other essentials was introduced. Officially the ration was set at 1,500 calories a day, enough for subsistence only, but in practice it fell far short of this for many Japanese. To foster patriotism and imbue the military spirit among Japan’s children, compulsory schools were introduced. At them children were taught that the highest virtue of all was to serve, and if necessary die for, the Emperor. At school, military training was given, and children also worked in war factories. With manpower shortages, Japanese women, whose role in society was to bear these warrior sons, were now conscripted to work on the land, in factories and in the mines. Buddhism had been a feature of Japanese religious life for centuries, but starting in the 1920s, nationalists and militarists had begun to insist that Shinto be practised as the sole state religion. The Emperor was revered as a warrior god who would lead an invincible Japan in conquest. The Bushido (‘way of the warrior’) values of loyalty, strength and selfdenial were promoted. Japanese boys were taught to emulate the martial code of the Samurai, where a glorious death in battle was a moment of perfection. On reaching military age, Japanese conscripts were sent off to war with a ‘belt of a thousand stitches’. These were embroidered with the names of family and friends and sometimes complete strangers and were supposed to ward off enemy bullets. Japan experienced its first ever air raid on 18 April 1942. 16 bombers under the command of Colonel James Doolittle, launched from an aircraft carrier, attacked Tokyo. They caused very little damage, but the raid came as a huge shock, especially as Japanese propaganda had proclaimed Japanese airspace impenetrable. A new American bomber, the B-29 Superfortress had just enough range to hit Japanese cities from bases in India and China from June 1944. But one month later, with the occupation of the Marianas Islands (Guam, Tinian and Saipan) in the Pacific, these new heavy bombers, were able to attack all of the Japanese home islands in large numbers. In March 1945 alone, the US Air Force attacked 66 Japanese cities and, as part of Operation Starvation, sowed mines that made access by sea to key ports extremely hazardous. THE DOOLITTLE RAID, 18 APRIL 1942 A B 25 bomber of the US Army Air Force, piloted by Lieutenant Colonel James H Doolittle, takes off from USS HORNET, bound for a raid on Tokyo and other Japanese military centres on 18 April 1942. NY 7343 From attacking selected industrial targets, in particular Japan’s aircraft plants, the tactics of the bombers changed. There were several reasons for this. High-precision raids had not had caused the predicted damage to key targets, which were often obscured by heavy, unbroken cloud. Indeed accurate bombing over some cities, including Tokyo, was all but impossible due to heavy winds, jet streams which constantly changed direction, breaking up the formations and pushed the aircraft during their bombing runs. 6 From March 1945, whole cities were destroyed by heavy bombers flying low under the cloud, with firebombs the weapon of choice. The intention was to destroy Japanese industry by area bombing. General Curtis Le May, who devised the plan, realised that Japanese civilian casualties would be heavy. But he reasoned that the alternative, an invasion of Japan would be even more costly and asked his doubters ‘Would you rather have Americans killed?’. The mainly wooden buildings of Japanese cities burned easily and firebreaks – areas cleared of housing to halt the spread of fire – proved almost useless. Tokyo was the first city to be targeted by Le May. In a single raid on 9 March 1945 over 100,000 people were killed. Japanese citizens were caught up in the land war for the first time in June 1944 when US troops landed on Saipan. Almost all of the Japanese troops on the island died, many of them by killing themselves. Many of the civilian population chose to join them or were forced to do so. On Okinawa, 75,000 civilians died during the fighting for the island. Fearing heavy casualties in any invasion of the Japanese mainland and a war which might be drawn out for another two years, the United States dropped the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Three days later, a second atomic bomb destroyed Nagasaki. Finally, despite the desire of some hardliners to continue the war, the Emperor and his cabinet decided that they had to accept the Allies’ demand for Japan’s unconditional surrender. On 15 August 1945, the Japanese population heard Emperor Hirohito’s surrender broadcast. In it, he said that ‘the war has not necessarily developed to Japan’s advantage’. It was the first time they had heard his voice. He made no reference to ‘surrender’ or ‘defeat’. Nearly 3 million Japanese were dead, the country was devastated and millions were homeless and starving. 2. JAPAN 1945 TO DATE The surrender was signed formally on 2 September 1945 and Japan was occupied for the first time in its history. General Douglas MacArthur was made Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Japan and he immediately set about political and social reform. His aim was to educate the Japanese, whom he viewed as children, and to make them assume the American model of democracy. Japan was demilitarised, with the army and navy disbanded. 948 political and military leaders were executed as war criminals, including the prime minister from 1941 to 1944, General Hideki Tojo. Emperor Hirohito, seen by the United States as vital to support for the occupation, was spared in return for renouncing his divinity and declaring himself a human being, not a god. From now on, he was to be a ‘symbol of national unity’. He would now only participate at ceremonies and would have no political power. A new constitution was drafted by the Americans in just a week. One JAPANESE ROYALTY Portrait of HM The Emperor Hirohito of Japan on his favourite horse "Shirayuki" on 6 November 1935. HU 36523 clause prevented – and still prevents - Japan from ‘the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes’. Unlike the Allied occupation of Germany, the Japanese people were to be their own administrators, albeit with the American occupying 7 authorities looking over their shoulders as if they were unruly children. The first general election took place in 1946. Education was reformed. Militaristic images and references to Samurai and Japanese weaponry were blotted out of books. In a population starved of colour and fed for years with military propaganda, American culture became popular – films, music, fashions and sport (baseball is still very popular today). Everything went through the censor first, so that negative images of the US did not slip through. In 1951, the peace treaty was finally signed in San Francisco. By then, Japan’s economy was strengthening. With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the country became the largest supplier of food and arms to US forces. The occupation officially ended in April 1952, but the Americans retained the right to keep bases on Japanese soil. (Okinawa was only returned to Japan in 1972, although there are still US bases there by agreement within the Japanese government). From 1955, the US-backed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governed Japan for 38 years. Like its defeated former ally, West Germany, Japan experienced its own economic miracle from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s. Japanese products, particularly electrical goods, once considered of inferior quality, sold in vast numbers. The 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games secured Japan’s place back in the family of nations. Massive construction projects, which continued through the 1980s, reflected the country’s new found confidence. Nerves remained, however, both in Japan and internationally, over Japan’s role in world affairs. The constitution forbade participation of its armed forces – the Self-Defence Force in the 1991 Gulf War. At first, Japan allocated a huge financial package towards the war, but huge public demonstrations forced the Diet (parliament) to see through a bill allowing Japanese troops to join UN peacekeeping forces overseas. By 1993, Japan’s boom was over. The economy slid into recession and the LDP lost a general election to a coalition. Political corruption, natural disasters like the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the sarin gas attack by cult members on the Tokyo underground,and bankruptcies of major businesses, have all caused Japan to reassess itself. 3. A NOTE ON THE SHINTO RELIGION Japan has its own religion, Shinto or the way of the Gods, a faith more than 2,000 years old. All Japanese belong to this religion, but some three quarters are also Buddhists. Shinto does not have scriptures, but all followers understand that they must live in harmony and cooperation, as do the Gods or kami. That being so, followers are also allowed to observe other religions. According to Shinto, kami are present in nature - in rocks, trees, flowers and waterfalls. People who die, including soldiers killed in battle, become kami. People are believed to be children of both their parents and the kami. Shinto was ushered in as the state religion in the 1920s as a way of reasserting the cult of the emperor. Japanese scholars in the 1820s had believed that the West was stronger than Japan because Christianity unified the nation and made people obedient to their rulers. Shinto was accordingly revived as the dominant religion in Japan from the late 19th century, largely to reassert the cult of the emperor, who became its high priest while the sun goddess became like the Christian God. State Shinto also ushered in a period of extreme nationalism. Because all Japanese people were supposed to be descended from the imperial line, the 1930’s military regime used this to foster a sense of superiority. After the war, the link 8 between Shinto and government was severed by the US occupiers. Shinto shrines, such as the Yasukuni in Tokyo (one of the sites we will be visiting) have since been looked after by private organisations. 4. JAPAN AND THE COLLECTIVE MEMORY OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR Japan's failure to acknowledge its war guilt and war crimes stands in stark contrast to the willingness of Germany to confront its own recent past. The Second World War, and Japan’s conduct of that war, is, for most Japanese, not something that their country was actively involved in, but something that happened to it. This can be seen in the annual commemoration of the war dead, with its stress on Japanese suffering, and in the content of history books, in particular school textbooks. On 15 August each year, there is a government-sponsored ‘Day Commemorating the End of War’ (this was the date when the Japanese emperor announced to his people that the war was over). The ceremony is largely superficial. Thousands of guests, including the prime minister and families of war dead, are invited to the Budokan, a venue normally used for concerts or sumo wrestling. The hall is bedecked with chrysanthemums. There is no debate or reflection on the deeper issues concerning Japan and the Second World War. The day is not even a national holiday and, for those born after the war, it is largely meaningless. Almost 3 million Japanese citizens were killed between 1937 and 1945 and for those who experienced the war, as a soldier or as a civilian, the larger issues are often buried under private pain. Rather than the Japanese people being held collectively accountable for the crimes of their government and armed forces during the war, blame fell on the handful of war criminals tried after the Second World War. However, the wartime head of state, Emperor Hirohito, never stood trial. From the late 1940s, the United States also saw Japan as a bulwark against communism, as the Cold War with the Soviet Union heated up. The Americans felt that Japanese were more likely to be anti-American, and therefore pro-Soviet, if Japanese war crimes trials continued. Accordingly, war crimes trials were stopped from 1949 and many suspected war criminals released from prison. 5. JAPANESE SCHOOL TEXTBOOK DEBATE Of critical importance in Japanese attitudes to the war is the school textbook debate. Japanese history text books, which are approved by the Japanese education ministry, tend to omit or gloss over Japanese atrocities and to concentrate on Japan’s own suffering. Their content is not only a matter for internal discussion, but also a diplomatic issue. Events have sometimes taken a more positive turn. Some gestures of apology have been made. In1993, the Prime Minister, Hosokawa Morihiro, declared at a press conference that the war was ‘aggressive’ and ‘wrong’. In 1998, at a meeting with Tony Blair, Prime Minister Ryaturo Hashimoto offered ‘an expression of deep remorse and heartfelt apology to the people who suffered in the Second World War’. These statements did not go far enough for former British and Commonwealth PoWs seeking compensation, and equally outraged Japanese nationalists. Japan has been Asia’s leading nation for over 100 years. Now China seems about to take over that role. In response, a new nationalism has begun to take hold in Japan, a country which, since the war, has been publicly devoted to peace and economic prosperity. One 9 of the most visible signs of that nationalism is the Japanese authorities' approval of new school history textbooks written by known right-wing academics. Both China and South Korea first protested in 1982 at the content of Japanese history books. One Japanese writer, Ienaga Saburo, took the education ministry to court several times on the issue. He won the case for violation of his freedom of speech, but the Supreme Court overturned the decision. In another case, Saburo claimed that the ministry was exceeding its authority by asking him to play down accounts of Japanese brutality. In the early 1990s, Japanese history textbooks were more open about Japan’s wartime conduct, including military sex slavery, slave labour, and the massacres of Chinese, even the killing of civilians on Okinawa by Japanese forces. But, since the mid-1990s, the school textbook issue has been bitterly contested. In 2001, under intense pressure from extreme nationalists, Japan's education ministry approved a history textbook produced by the extremist Society for History Text Book Reform. The latest books have provoked the greatest controversy of all, sparking violent demonstrations in China and Korea. They have removed even small references to Japanese atrocities. One Japanese newspaper called on its readers to celebrate because the latest textbooks have cut out details of the use of large numbers of women in conquered Asian countries as sex slaves for the Japanese army on the basis that the accusations were ‘untrue’. The ministry still retains the veto on the content of books. 6. HISTORIC SITES WE WILL BE VISITING 6.1 KYOTO Kyoto is a city located in in the eastern part of the mountainous region known as the Tamba highlands. It is a World Heritage Site and home to 2000 Buddhist temples and Shinto shrines, as well as palaces, gardens and architecture. During the 8th century, the Emperor chose to relocate the capital to a region far from the Buddhist influence. The new city, became the seat of Japan's imperial court in 794 until the transfer of the government to Edo (later renamed Tokyo) in 1868. There was some consideration by the United States of targeting Kyoto with an atomic bomb, but in the end it was decided to remove the city from the list of targets due to the insistence of Henry L. Stimson, Secretary of War in the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. It is believed that this decision was made as it would be unfair to destroy a city with such history and heritage. The city's skyline includes the modern and the traditional. As a result, Kyoto is one of the few Japanese cities that still has an abundance of prewar buildings, such as the traditional townhouses known as machiya. However, modernization is continually breaking down the traditional Kyoto in favor of newer architecture, such as the Kyoto Station complex. 6.1.1Kinkakuji (Temple of the Golden Pavilion) Kinkakuji is a famous structure dating from the Muromachi Period (1336-1573) and is listed on UNESCO's World Heritage List. The upper stories are covered in gold leaf and the roof is 10 topped by a bronze phoenix. The reflection of the temple shimmers majestically in the waters of a rock-studded pond. 6.1.2 Ryoanji Ryoanji is a Zen temple in northwestern Kyoto. The temple's main attraction is its rock garden, the most famous of its kind in Japan. The simple Zen garden consists of nothing but rocks, moss and neatly raked gravel. The meaning of the garden's arrangement is unknown and up to each visitor's interpretation. 6.1.3 Nijo Castle Built by Ieyasu, the founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate, in 1603, Nijo Castle is a World Heritage Site and its Ninomaru Palace is designated a National Treasure on account of its splendid architecture and magnificent interior decoration. ieyasu built the castle as his Kyoto residence, but its greater significance was as a symbol of Tokugawa power in the Kansai region. 6.1.4 Kiyomizu Temple Noted for its cliff top Main Hall with a broad wooden veranda affording a panoramic view of Kyoto and environs. The veranda is supported on a towering scaffold of wood. Situated on a wooded hillside, the veranda seems to hang in midair. The depth of the valley below is such that the Japanese expression "To jump from the veranda of Kiyomizu Temple" means to do something daring. The veranda was built on the temple's south side so that it would face the sacred Otowa Falls. The present temple structures were built in 1633 at the behest of iemitsu, the third of the Tokugawa shoguns. The Main Hall has been designated a National Treasure. 6.1.5 Heian Shrine Built in 1895 for the 1,100th anniversary of the Heian Capital. The Heian Shrine is dedicated to the first and last emperors that reigned from Kyoto. The shrine buildings are partial replicas of the Imperial Palace of the Heian Period. 6.1.6 Kyoto Museum For World Peace None of the TPYF team has been to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, so it will be an interesting experience for us all, not least because this relatively new museum promises to be unusually frank about Japan’s war record. The Kyoto Museum has a very explicit mission to make its visitors ‘see, feel, think, then, take, your, first, step, towards, peace’. It was set up in 1992 by Ritsumeikan University as a way of ackowledging its own role in supporting Japanese aggression during the Second World War. According to its website, it ‘is just one of many such institutions in Japan a nation that serves as home to more than half of the world's 100 -plus peace museums’. Yet the Museum is unusual among Japanese museums in explicitly recognising Japanese wartime aggression and atrocities. Notably, it was set up after Emperor Hirohito died in 1989. Prior to that, such an exhibition, 11 which would by implication criticise policies carried out in the name of the emperor, would have been unthinkable. The Museum’s website states that the museum emphasises ‘the importance of peace primarily by covering the problems of war and the arms race and accurately portraying the suffering they bring about…the Museum is also striving to … contribute to the development of true peace.’ Broadly speaking, the Museum looks at conflict from the First World War to the present. However, the main focus is on Japanese involvement in the ‘Fifteen Year War’, from the Japanese occupation of Manchuria in 1931 until the end of the Second World War in 1945. It includes gallery areas on both Kyoto and the Ritsumeikan University during the war. Other exhibitions take in the Cold War, weapons development, and conflict today. The Museum also contains a Gallery for Peace. This gallery shows contemporary art as well as supporting a wide agenda; ‘human rights through nonviolence, the Victory over Violence campaign, a healthy global environment, the abolition of war, global citizenship, other organizations dedicated to Peace, health care and education for all people’. 6.2 HIROSHIMA 6.2.1 Miyajima Island and Itsukushima Shrine Itsukushima is an island in the Inland Sea of Japan. It is popularly known as Miyajima,’the Shrine Island’. It is most famous for Itsukushima Shrine a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which, together with its large wooden torii (gate), stands in the ocean during high tide. The island of Itsukushima, including the waters around it (part of Seto Inland Sea), and are within Setonaikai National Park. 6.2.2 A Note On The Bombing Of Hiroshima Before looking at the sites we will be visiting in Hiroshima, it is worth explaining in a little more detail what happened there sixty-three years ago. In Japanese minds, the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima remains the defining event of the war. On 6 August 1945, a B-29 Superfortress, ‘Enola Gay’, took off from an airfield on Tinian, in the Marianas Islands, carrying the atomic bomb which would be dropped on Hiroshima. This devastating new THE STRATEGIC AIR OFFENSIVE 1939weapon was dropped by parachute and detonated 1945 Rocket Weapons and the Atomic Bomb: at 8.15 am, 580 metres (1,885 ft.) above the ground. The B-29 'Enola Gay' which dropped the The detonation created a fireball which emitted heat, Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and her pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets. HU 44878 radiation and shockwaves, destroying all wooden structures within a two kilometre radius. Altogether, an area of 13 square kilometres was flattened and of the 76,000 buildings in the city, over 60% were destroyed. 70,000 people died, killed outright or within days. The final death toll was around double that, due to the longer-term radiation sickness. Those who survived often suffered terrible illness from radiation. Even unborn children have suffered, with many being born with mental or physical disabilities because of exposure to radiation. 12 The Americans dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and, three days later, Nagasaki, to convince Japan to surrender. The alternative was to invade the Japanese mainland and, after experiencing fanatical resistance during the battle for Okinawa, US military planners feared heavy casualties among their troops. Some historians have suggested that Japan was at the point of collapse anyway and that dropping the bomb was unnecessary and really a way of showing the Soviet Union that the bomb had been successfully developed as a pre-cursor to increasing tensions within the Cold War. The development of the atomic bomb was made possible by huge advances in physics in the 1930s. American scientists, fearing that Germany was developing its own nuclear weapon, began work to create the bomb in mid-1941. The ‘Manhattan Project’, which involved 120,000 people in the US and in Canada, was conducted in the highest secrecy. The first bomb was successfully tested in the New Mexico desert on 16 July 1945. From late 1944, a special US bomber unit began practising on the Marianas to drop the atomic bomb in anger. Hiroshima was chosen as a target because it had not yet been subjected to air attack and the full force of the atomic bomb would be evident. Kyoto, the old imperial capital had been on the list of targets but it was removed at the insistence of US President Truman and the war secretary, Henry Stimson. This may well have been because the old capital city was home to numerous important cultural treasures. More cynical commentators have, however, pointed out that the destruction of the cultural, historic and religious centre of Japan might have driven the devastated nation into the arms of the Russians. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan is still hugely controversial and we will be exploring these and other controversies while we are in Hiroshima, where it was first used. Many claim that the Japanese were ready to surrender anyway and that the bombs were a way of showing American power to the Russians. Others have argued that the atomic bombs saved Japanese lives in the long run, as the poorly armed 28 million strong civilian militia which had been assembled to oppose any landings would have been slaughtered by Allied airpower, artillery, tanks, machine guns and flamethrowers. Of his decision to drop the bomb on Hiroshima, US President Harold S Truman publicly expressed that he had ‘never had any doubt’. But in a letter to his sister, he wrote: ‘It was a terrible decision.’ In a private journal he wrote that: ‘even if the Japs are savages, ruthless, merciless and fanatic, we as the leader of the worlds for the common welfare cannot drop this terrible bomb on the old capital or the new [Tokyo was then the probable target].’ 6.2.3 Hiroshima Peace Park And Peace Museum The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was established in August 1955. It is a campaigning museum – one reason it was set up was to seek the abolition of nuclear weapons and to promote peace. The Museum comprises an exhibition on the story of Hiroshima both before and after the bomb. It shows the belongings of bomb victims, photographs, and other artefacts. There is also a virtual museum to convey the museum’s work via the Internet to people around the world. The museum is set in the district of Nakajima, directly underneath where the A-bomb detonated. In 1949, it was decided to make the whole of Nakjima a memorial park. The park now features numerous memorials to those who died as a result of the detonation of 13 the atomic bomb. Among these are memorials to schools and the Aioi Bridge, which was the aiming point for the bomber crew. The most iconic is the A-Bomb Dome, originally the Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall. The blast from the atomic bomb killed all those working in the hall, but because the blast struck downwards onto and into the building, the walls and the dome remained standing. Hiroshima is now on UNESCO’s World Heritage List. A Peace Clock Tower chimes ‘No More Hiroshimas’ each day at 8.15 am. Each year, before an assembled crowd of senior politicians and other dignitaries, the mayor of Hiroshima, delivers an address to commemorate those who died and to call for peace. It is this ceremony which we will be attending. 6.3 TOKYO 6.3.1 Edo Museum Again, this is not somewhere the TPYF team has been before, but judging from its website, the Edo Museum (Edo was what the city was called until 1868) while being a museum about Japan’s capital city is also a museum about Japan itself. What will be of particular interest to us will be the Edo Museum’s representation of the Japanese presence in China, the Second World War and post-war reconstruction. The way the museum presents another episode in its history - in many ways as calamitous as Hiroshima - will also be interesting to see. On 9 March 1945, 334 American B29 Superfortress heavy bombers, many armed with napalm bombs, attacked the city at low level in an attack lasting three hours. The raid caused a firestorm in which temperatures reached 1,800F. Approximately 41 km² of the city was destroyed. 100,000 people are estimated to have been killed, more than the immediate deaths of either Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Over a million people lost their homes. Firebomb raids such as this had a huge effect upon Japanese morale. The population of Tokyo fell from 5 million in January 1945 to less than half that in August, as panic-stricken citizens left the city for their own safety. Only fourteen American bombers were lost. Interestingly, American bomber crews were ordered to avoid hitting the Imperial palace. Part of that order read: ‘The Emperor of Japan is not at present a liability and may well become an asset’. The palace was damaged however in the last major raid on the city, on 25 May 1945. With 86 per cent of the city destroyed, Tokyo was removed from the list of important targets. 6.3.2 Yasukuni Shrine And Yushukan Museum The Yasukuni Shrine, the holiest shrine of the militarized emperor cult, is one of the most controversial war memorials in the world. Although a private concern, its museum, the Yukushan, is the nearest thing Japan has to a national war museum. The Yasukuni, a Shinto shrine, has been privately run since the war. Yasukuni means ‘peaceful country’. The shrine was completed in 1868 to commemorate and allow Japanese citizens to worship those who have died in war for their country from 1853, from the conflicts of the Meiji Restoration onwards. It commemorates some 2.5 million dead, women included. They are remembered in the form of written records giving the name and origin of the individual, as well as the place and date of death. 14 The shrine is controversial for several reasons. In 1976 it was discovered that convicted war criminals, among them the Japanese wartime Prime Minister Hideki Tojo were on the list of those honoured as ‘noble souls’. Appeals to the private owners of the shrine to remove such names have been rejected. From 1975, visits by Japanese prime misters have caused outrage among liberal Japanese, citizens of countries who suffered under Japanese rule and former prisoners of the Japanese. The Yasukuni has also become a place of pilgrimage for Japanese far-right nationalists. One feature of the site is the Yushukan, a war museum originally built in 1882 which looks at the history of conflicts involving Japan. Closed down by the US occupation authorities in 1945, it reopened in 1985 and has since twice been renovated. The Yushukan contains 18 galleries giving a very partial, nationalistic (and often factually incorrect) view of Japan’s history. Japan is shown as an innocent victim of a Western conspiracy to thwart its ambition to lead East Asia and force Japan into war. Japan’s annexation of Korea and invasion of China is presented as self-defence. As regards the 1937-1938 Rape of Nanking, in which some 300,000 Chinese were brutalized and slaughtered by Japanese forces, The Yushukan states that Japan created a safe haven in the city, allowing Chinese civilians to live in peace. The safe haven was, in fact, created by a handful of civilians from Germany and the USA who were shocked at the widespread rape and murder. From the Yasukuni website: ‘Japan’s dream of building a Greater East Asia was necessitated by history’ and, in response to inclusion of information about comfort women (Korean women forced into sexual slavery) in school text books: ’We cannot overlook the intent of those who wish to tarnish the name of the noble souls of Yasukuni.’ A debate is currently taking place as to whether a second, less charged memorial to Japan’s war dead might be created. 6.3.3 Hitachi Aircraft Factory Electricity Substation Very little evidence remains of the devastating air raids carried out by US bombers on Tokyo in the final year of the war. This building, an electricity substation for the Hitachi Aircraft Company, which manufactured aero engines, is an exception. On the outside wall you can see the damage caused by strafing and bombings. It was hit in three raids between February and April 1945, killing over 110 workers. Many of those damaged structures that did survive were torn down by developers after the war and so this building is highly unusual. The substation continued to operate until December of 1993 . It was scheduled for demolition, but former employees and others wanted to preserve a valuable war-damaged building for future generations and theior protests saved the substation from destruction. It was officially declared an historic site in 1995, and the building repaired in order to preserve it and open it to public in the future. The local borad of education says that they hope the scarred building will bring home to people the misery of war and the pricelessness of peace. 6.4 YOKOHAMA The great port city just southwest of Tokyo was not chosen as a target until May 1945, though it did suffer heavily from bombs intended for Kawasaki and Tokyo. A massive raid on 29 May wiped out nine square miles of the city centre. 6.4.1 Yokahama Commonwealth War Cemetery 15 Our main interest in visiting this beautiful cemetery is to see the final resting place of British and Commonwealth prisoners of war who died during their captivity in Japan. The story of the prisoners sent to labour in Japan is less well known than that of the men who slaved on the Burma-Thailand Death Railway (made famous by the 1957 film Bridge on the River Kwai) and by going to Yokohama, we can look at a very difficult area of history from a different angle. Japanese treatment of Allied prisoners was appalling. 50,000 British troops alone were captured in the Far East and by the end of the war one in four of them would have died. The figure was one in twenty for those captured by German or Italian forces. In Japanese camps, disease and malnutrition were rife and some prisoners were beaten to death or executed by their guards, usually for the most minor of ‘offences’. Red Cross parcels and medicines which might have saved lives were deliberately withheld. While most prisoners were held in Singapore, Thailand or Burma, during the course of the war more than 70,000 troops were transported to other destinations in unmarked prison ships, most of then to Japan. Conditions on these ‘hellships’ were terrible and 19 were sunk, killing 22,000. Prisoners of war in Japan were usually made to labour on construction projects, factories, down mines or in dockyards. Conditions were usually not as harsh in Japan as those on, say, the Death Railway, but this is all relative, as the number of British and Commonwealth graves in this cemetery shows. The Yokohama war cemetery, at Hodogaya, near Yokohama, close to Tokyo, is the only Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery in Japan. The cemetery commemorates 1,555 Commonwealth dead of the Second World War, among them those who could not be identified and a small number of memorials to casualties known to be buried in the cemetery, but whose graves could not be precisely located. The cemetery, which was constructed by the Australian War Graves Group, is divided into four sections: a United Kingdom section, the Australian section, the Canadian and New Zealand section and the Indian Forces 1939-1945 section. A Cross of Sacrifice stands in each of the first three sections. In the fourth section, there is a special monument to the ’Indian Forces 1939-1945’. On one side it is inscribed ‘India’, and on the other ‘Pakistan’. Approximately two thirds of the graves contain the remains of British servicemen. Most of them were prisoners of war brought to Japan as slave labour, mostly from 1943 to 1945. The cemetery also contains the Yokohama Memorial and the Yokohama Cremation Memorial. The Yokohama Memorial commemorates 20 servicemen from the Indian Army and the Royal Indian Air Force. In the Yokohama Cremation Memorial shrine, there is an urn which holds the ashes of 335 servicemen from the British Commonwealth, the USA and the Netherlands who died as prisoners of war in Japan. Their names can be found on the walls of the shrine, apart from 51 of them, whose identities could not be ascertained. A postwar plot contains 171 non-war service and civilian burials. 16